Housing Standards 2003/2004:
Housing Policy in the Czech Republic - More Efficiently and More Effective

1. Housing shortage in the Czech Republic?

Introduction

At the outset of the study the authors provide a brief overview of the changing approaches to housing policy in the second half of the 20th century consisting, among other things, in a shift from ensuring basic housing availability to ensuring housing affordability. Using the example of three studies from various periods assessing housing availability in three various countries in different conditions, they demonstrate the profound similarity in approaches of these authors. All of them assess housing availability based on the same criterion - a ratio of the number of households to the number of dwellings.

The authors point to the fact that the range of approaches which can be used to examine "housing needs" is much varied. They describe four different traditions (Ytrehus 2001) in understanding the term "housing need".

• Spatial tradition is historically the oldest approach and represents a normative and 'objective' concept of housing needs. It flows from biological determinism and therefore presumes that the satisfaction of housing needs is closely related to spatial characteristics of housing, which reflect 'objective' needs of people as biological organisms. The key indicator of "housing need" satisfaction in this approach is the size of housing, namely its total and living space and functional spatial arrangement.
• Market-oriented tradition stems from the belief that needs are nothing but subjective preferences of individual people. This applies to all actors on the market and to all human needs, including the housing need. This approach finds its origin in economic theory and starts from the premise that the most rational way to distribute goods and services is through an interaction between supply and demand on a free market.
• Culture relativist tradition stems from the belief that both the spatial approach and the market-oriented approach ignore the fact that a "housing need" always contains social and cultural aspects. Needs (including housing needs) are always linked to a certain period, space, time, and cultural and social context in which they exist. Housing needs of individuals or households are not therefore understood as absolute needs but as relative needs depending on the level to which the needs of other households are satisfied. In this approach people with unsatisfied housing needs can be defined as those whose housing need is satisfied to an extent that results in their social exclusion.
• Universal standard tradition stems from the belief that there are certain objective and universal human needs that lie in human nature and that must be satisfied if a person is not to suffer "serious damage". Doyal and Gough (1991) define universal human needs as the need of physical well-being and autonomy. Normal human needs, including housing needs, are then understood by Doyal and Gough as mere tools to satisfy the above-mentioned universal human needs. The criteria according to which it is assessed how momentary needs, including housing needs, are satisfied therefore differ according to the situation in society and depending on how paths toward achieving the universal human needs change. Therefore, also, indicators used to measure the momentary level of housing need satisfaction in society must gradually change.

It is always complicated to choose among the above-mentioned approaches to assessing a housing shortage as this choice always, to a certain extent, pre-determines the results of the assessment. To discuss "housing needs" and "housing shortage" in the Czech Republic, we used the traditional spatial approach and the market-oriented approach. In order for housing to be considered available, two conditions must be met. Firstly, there must be such an amount of housing units the quality, size (number of rooms and living space) and geographical distribution of which correspond to the number of households, their size, structure and place of residence. Secondly, a household must have an opportunity to use the existing housing units (acquire or lease them) at a price that does not present too large a burden for such a household's income. The first of the conditions is usually termed availability while the second is known under the term affordability.